NEW YORK (Reuters) — Glenn Greenwald and
Laura Poitras, the U.S. journalists who reported on spy agency analyst
Edward Snowden's leaks exposing mass government surveillance, returned
to the United States on Friday for the first time since revealing the
programs in 2013.

Greenwald and Poitras flew into New York's John F. Kennedy
International Airport on the same flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to
receive a George Polk journalism award for their reports on how the
U.S. government has secretly gathered information on millions of
Americans, among other revelations.

Their reporting on the leaks, which began last June, has sparked
international debate over the limits of government surveillance and
prompted President Barack Obama to introduce curbs to the spying
powers of the National Security Agency earlier this year.

"I really didn't expect anything to happen, which is why we finally
came," Greenwald told reporters after embracing his partner, David
Miranda, who had earlier said he was nervous as he waited for
Greenwald to pass through airport security.

Last August, British authorities detained Miranda, a Brazilian
citizen who lives with Greenwald in Rio, and questioned him for nine
hours under anti-terrorism legislation when he landed at London's
Heathrow Airport carrying encrypted Snowden documents.

Advocates for a free press have decried Miranda's detention and the
British government's efforts to prevent the Guardian newspaper,
which published many of Greenwald's articles, from running further
stories about the Snowden documents.

Greenwald said he believed the U.S. government "wouldn't be that
incredibly stupid and self-destructive" to detain him and Poitras in
a similar way. When asked if he had carried Snowden documents with
him, Greenwald repeated the question incredulously and laughed,
saying, "No, I didn't."

Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum last year after the U.S.
Justice Department charged him with violating the Espionage Act.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said he does not plan to prosecute
Greenwald for receiving and reporting on the leaks.

Poitras, an American citizen who lives in Berlin, has said U.S.
authorities have detained and questioned her dozens of times when
re-entering the United States and seized and copied her cellphone,
laptop and notebooks.

She has said the increased scrutiny began after the 2006 release of
her film "My Country, My Country", an Academy Award-nominated
documentary about the effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 on
Iraqi civilians and American soldiers.

Greenwald and Poitras received their award jointly with the
Washington Post's Barton Gellman, who also received documents from
Snowden, and the Guardian's Ewen MacAskill, both of whom have been
in the United States while reporting on the leaks.

After the ceremony, Greenwald said he had been surprised by the
scope of spying uncovered by Snowden at the National Security
Agency.

"The most significant revelation is the ambition of the United
States government and its four English-speaking allies to literally
eliminate privacy worldwide," he said.

Speaking of President Obama, Greenwald said, "He is one of the
obstacles to reform, not a vehicle for it."